CELTA at IH Costa Rica Instituto Britanico

The course is a 4-week, full-time period of study held in San José. The syllabus is covered through seminars and workshops with emphasis given to the following:

Input sessions

  • Grammatical structures and their functions
  • Lexis, pronunciation and discourse
  • Error analysis and correction
  • Current teaching methods
  • The learner, the teacher and the teaching/learning context
  • Effective lesson planning and preparation
  • Classroom management
  • Classroom resources and textbooks
  • A brief study of a foreign language

Teaching practice

All trainees are required to teach a minimum of six hours of assessed teaching practice.

A lesson plan and copies of all materials to be used have to submitted to the course tutor before the lesson.

Following the teaching practice, trainees must write a self-evaluation of their lesson, which is used as the basis for feedback given by the course tutor and other trainees.

Trainees are given a written assessment of their lesson by the tutor.

Supervised lesson preparation

Before each teaching practice, trainees are given the opportunity to discuss their lesson plans and materials with a course tutor to get support, guidance and feedback.

Written assignments

Practical analysis of teaching and learning a language from four different perspectives.

Tutorials

Three one-to-one tutorials are held during the course, in which the trainee and the course tutor jointly evaluate progress and agree recommendations for the remainder of the course.